Deep Roots: Animal Rights Blog

Joel at AnimalBlawg recently wrote a post calling for a strong, nonhierarchal veg movement in DC. This has sparked a lot of thinking for me about the need to have conversations about strategy, tactics, and other aspects of effective change, so I’ll be putting together a series of posts to help spark those conversations.

Today, I want to talk a bit about strategic planning. Too often, I see groups spending a lot of time organizing events, raising money, and so forth without taking the time to really think about what affect all the time and energy spent will actually accomplish. Don’t get me wrong, I’m a big fan of the “fake it ’til you make it” mantra and am happy to see people organizing themselves in any way that shows they are tired of complacency, but that doesn’t mean we can’t move past that stage with some healthy dialog. After all, if we are going to be in this for the long haul, then we can’t keep setting ourselves up for constant action with no tangible results.

That brings us to our first step in the planning process: define the short and long term goals. How you set these goals is up to the folks with whom you are working. I like to set one really big goal and then to define shorter term, more easily obtainable goals as markers in the path to the long term goal. When setting short term goals, I like to be able to have some sort of victory at least every few months. This keeps the momentum going and keeps people active and excited. If your campaign isn’t able to produce a lot of smaller victories, try setting other milestones that you celebrate once you meet them. These can’t be arbitrary milestones, but things that keep you on the path to your next goal. For example, if you are trying to bring a community together to, say, ban circuses with animals, an early milestone might be something like getting interviewed in the media. Sure, it didn’t really accomplish any real results for the animals, but it did help raise awareness about the issues and hopefully you used it as a tool to recruit more people to the campaign. The key, however, is to focus on the goals, not the milestones. Remember, this is about creating real change in animals’ lives, not just feeling good about ourselves.

The next thing you’ll need to to is figure out your organizational strengths and weaknesses. Do you have members with experience in copy writing, public relations, construction, animal care, event planning, what? Do an assessment of your organizations talents to figure out what role your organization will best play in the campaign and to help map out some short term goals and milestones. Once you have a list of strengths, move on to weaknesses. Are you missing good public speakers, writers, etc? Once you know your weaknesses, you’ll know what holes you have to fill in order to better accomplish your goals. These holes can be filled through training, recruitment or coalition building.

Which brings us to our next question: who cares about this problem? I encourage people to think creatively about this. Brainstorm and mind-map ideas of who would care enough to get involved at any level. Once you have a list of groups of people (and individuals) who care about the problem, you’ll know who to target, where to target them, and how to target them. This is key to getting more volunteers and bringing in coalition members.

Along with knowing your allies, you’ll want to list out your opponents. This will help provide a list of potential targets, but will be even more effective in helping you to prepare for a response from those opposed to your goals. It will also help you in later research when figuring out your opponents strengths and weaknesses.

Now we need to ask who has the power to give you what we want? This is broken up into two categories, first is your primary target. This is the person or people who have the power to give you what you want. If its banning the circus, city council would be your likely target. Next is your secondary target: the people who have power over the people who can give you what you want. If its city council, one secondary target might be their large campaign financiers. Remember that targets always have faces and names. An institution itself doesn’t make decision, the people in control of that institution do. Once you have your targets, you need to ask what power you have over them. This is when you really start to realize just how much power you have and may not be fully utilizing.

The last part of today’s post is regarding tactics. I’m going to leave this one open ended because I plan on making it the topic of another post in the near future. But we need to ask ourselves, what tactics can we use to apply our power and make it felt by those who can give you what you want. I’ll give you a hint as to what my post will be about; we need to accept that a true diversity of tactics and not a tactical standstill is what will move us forward in our longer term goals.

Please give me feedback. And thanks to the Midwest Academy for instilling these strategic planning tips into my brain nearly a decade ago.

Its not often that I am compelled to write about celebrities speaking out against certain atrocities, but Hayden Panettiere, star of the NBC series Heroes, has proven that she is willing to do more than just speak out.

Along with five friends, the 18-year-old actress from Australia paddled out on a surfboard to stop a pod of dolphins from being trapped and killed in a cull in Japan. Panettiere and friends were confronted by anglers who used their boat’s propeller and a boathook to force the surfers back to the shore.

From Sky News:

Panettiere, who is a keen surfer and a committed marine conservationist and supporter of the campaign to save the Japan dolphins, said: “It was really frightening.

“Some of us were hit by the boathook. But in the end all we really worried about was the dolphins.

“It was so incredibly sad. We were so close to them and they were sky hopping, jumping out of the water to see us.”

The six friends immediately drove to the airport and returned to Australia to avoid arrest by Japanese authorities. It is believe that the dolphins were taken into the cove and killed.

Click here to see a video of this story along with some background info on the dolphin slaughter.

More than 22,000 dolphins are killed in Japan each year. While this number pales in comparison to the number of other animals that are killed throughout the year for food, there is a nearly global consensus that dolphins should be protected. So now is the time to act on that consensus.

How You Can Help
Stop eating fish: Many of the dolphins are rounded up and killed as a form of pest control. They are seen as competition for the sea’s depleting fish population.

Boycott the captive dolphin industry: This includes zoos, aquariums, and the military. You can also send a letter. From Save Taiji Dolphins:

The tragic secret behind the slaughter is that the US and International dolphin captivity industry is fueling the massacre. They are organizing and funding the hunts in order to buy “show-quality” dolphins from the Japanese fishermen to use in dolphin shows, “Swim-with-the-Dolphins” programs and aquariums.

Donate to Save Taiji Dolphins: Help keep there team on the ground in Japan.

Today is [tag]World Vegan Day[/tag] and what better way to celebrate than to release another edition of the Carnival of Empty Cages? This edition of the carnival focuses a lot on being active in the struggle for animal rights. Fighting an uphill battle can be difficult. That’s why it is important for those that have been active to share their experiences - beginner and seasoned. I tried to pick posts that I felt gave practical skills and knowledge for staying healthy, active and effective.

This also means that I chose to highlight some posts that talk about the interconnectedness of struggle. If we are going to be truly effective as a global movement for compassion and justice, then we must learn to recognize how to work in solidarity with all such struggles and to incorporate those struggles into our daily activism.

I end the carnival on a lighter note, however. You’ll just have to read through to find out what it is.

Since it is World Vegan Day, lets start with an op-ed posted just this morning from Eric Prescott at An Animal-Friendly Life about celebrating the day.

November 1st is World Vegan Day, a time when millions of people around the world celebrate veganism, a way of living that seeks to eliminate the exploitation of animals for our own use. And what a lifestyle to celebrate! There are not many opportunities for the average person to make a difference in their world, but veganism is a powerful statement for peace that one can make at every meal. By removing the violence from our plates–meat, eggs and dairy products–we are consciously choosing to cultivate a more compassionate society, one in which animals’ interests are taken seriously. When we stop killing other individual sentient beings simply because we enjoy the taste of their flesh and secretions, we begin to see just how far the consequences of all our actions go.

Making Connections
To stay in the spirit of World Vegan Day, the next post, from SuperWeed, focuses on Animal Rights in South Africa, a book from South African author Michele Pickover.

If you’re not South African or even African, why should you read a book about animal rights in South Africa? Well, first of all, it’s always useful to find out how activists in other countries analyze and approach problems. And it’s always important to pay attention to South Africa, where post Apartheid democracy has been an object lesson in opportunity and challenge. Remember, it’s only been since 1994 that the black majority has had full rights. Contrary to the fearful predictions of some whites, that majority did not elect to retaliate for years of violent repression and discrimination, instead instituting a Truth and Reconciliation Commission specifically designed to promote healing within justice. Black-led South Africa was also the first country in the world to write equal rights for gay and lesbian citizens into its constitution.

In Squirrels [and Black Men] Gone Wild, Sistah Vegan talks about how the magazine Outdoor Life seems to equate the hatred of squirrels with the hatred of Black and Latino men.

WHY THE HELL IN 2007, IS THIS CARTOON ALLOWED, WHEN THE UNDERLYING MESSAGE IS BOTH SPECIESIST AND RACIST? Is the implication that black and Latino men involved in thug and gangsta life (or maybe if they aren’t even involved in gangsta life, but by default “gone wild” because they are black and Latino in a white culture that constructs them as deviant “at birth) are “animals”? Is this why, when the cartoonist decided to illustrate a “humanoid” version of a squirrel “gone bad”, he can only think of his perception of the deviant a black or Latino male that could also invade the white family’s reality and attack them?

Gary Francione, Animal Rights: The Abolitionist Approach, is always good at cutting through the malarkey of moral disconnect. In his recent post, Equality and Similarity to Humans , he deconstructs the arguments of animal ethicists who still choose to create humanocentric hierarchies.

as I argued in my chapter in The Great Ape Project and as I have said repeatedly since then, the right to full membership in the moral community and the right not to be treated as property is dependent on only one characteristic—sentience. If a nonhuman is sentient, then we have a moral obligation not to treat that being as a resource or commodity. The fact that a dog may not have the same sort of reflective self-awareness that a chimpanzee has does not mean that the dog and the chimpanzee are not equal for the purpose of not having their fundamental interests in life and in not suffering disregarded if it benefits someone else to do so.

In her post, Blogging against abuse, a blog for hope, Deb at Invisible Voices writes beautifully about the interconnectedness of issues of abuse and how thinking big provides her with a sense of hope.

When we are born, we are not sexist, we are not racist, and we are not even likely to abuse or exploit other species. We have all witnessed the child’s wonder and awe at nature’s everyday miracles. A child committing animal abuse is seen as a future psychopath and/or sociopath. So what happens? How do we go from the innocent child to being sexist and racist and turning a blind eye to a variety of abuses in society and in our community?

Becoming and Staying Active
In her post, Nurting activism, the ever insightful Pattrice Jones talks about the need for animal rights activists to stop for a moment and make sure we are taking care of our own animal rights.

As an activist, your most important tool is your body, including your brain. Can you imagine an auto mechanic bragging about leaving his tools out in the rain to get rusted and then trying to use them anyway? That’s what we do when we boast about going without sleep or skipping meals because we’re so hard at work. What we need to do instead is respect our tools. Eat well, get enough rest, stay hydrated (that’s the one I always forget), and don’t forget to breathe. Get some fresh air and exercise every day. (You can incorporate that into your activism by leafleting or doing some other activity that gets you walking around outside.) And don’t forget to give your body whatever (safe and consensual) pleasures it craves.

In his new column at Taste Better, Eric Prescott talks about the power of privilege and how once we have met our own needs, we then need to use our privileges to affect social change.

And that’s why I’m an activist. When I examine my needs, frivolous pastimes plunge way down the list of priorities. I don’t mean to suggest that compassionate people can never take a break and give their minds a genuine rest, but I do believe that filling one’s life with so much distraction that one is blinded to moral obligations is a major problem for so many privileged people in the world. For me, knowing that I’m in a position to effect positive changes in the world, I feel obligated to do what I can in that regard.

In Vegan FAQs, which is a great blog for new and non-vegans, drasch23 responds to a non-issue that many animal rights activists hear on a regular basis: I can’t worry about animals when so many people are suffering.

There is no reason that animal suffering and human suffering have to be separate. There is no reason that you cannot work towards ending both. In fact, if you look at the parallels between animal and human slavery, it doesn’t make sense to separate the two.

Continuing his series on advocating to free-rangers, Gary at Animal Writings published Organizations’ Message Part 2 and Sanctuaries as activism.

For meat-eaters, as well as lacto-ovo vegetarians, a visit to the animal sanctuary can be transformative. There is something about meeting the animals, seeing them close-up, watching them purposefully going about their days and expressing their personalities, that is not possible to convey in words or brochures, or even in a video.

Elaine Vigneault reminds us why it is so important for animal rights activists to create support networks in our lives. In her post, The Personal Is Political, Elaine shares a recent story about a group of ninth graders who talked to their class about vegetarianism and were subsequently taunted and then punished by the school administration.

Rather than remind the parents that a school is a place of learning, the administration turned on the advocates. According to McMahon’s mother, “They talked vaguely: ‘This will be a mark against you,’” and threatened to not allow the advocates to go on a class field trip later in the year, as punishment.

The harassment and unfriendly administration has led McMahon to leave the school altogether, and she will be home-schooled for the rest of the school year.

Issues
I’ve been a little annoyed by a lot of animal rights activists decrying of the surge of horse slaughtering in Mexico while ignoring the fact that there has been a similar increase in Canada. Eric Prescott doesn’t play the finger pointing game and, instead, promotes a bill in congress that would stop the exportat of horses for slaughter.Stop the export of horse slaughter.

Deb, at Invisible Voices, shares a humorous tale of how one person’s poor excuse for not going vegan provoked some further investigation into cell phones and birds. On a personal note, this reminded me of a time we were doing some street theater against hunting when someone came up and started yelling at us for driving. The ironic thing was that we had walked the three miles or so to where we were performing.

Animal Person Mary Martin chimes in on a couple of issues. The first of which is racing animals for entertainment (and the always original claim that dogs and horses just love to run), and the second is about the federal government’s killing of 1.6 million animals last year, including many endangered wolves, as a means of wildlife management.

Just for Fun
If you haven’t already seen it, you should check out the new online animated series, Tofu, the vegan zombie. The production put into this project is incredible.

Ryan over at The Veg Blog has put together a Triple Cookbook Review of The Vegan Family Cookbook, Vegan Success, and one of my old faves, Please Don’t Feed The Bears.

That wraps it up for this edition of the Carnival of Empty Cages. Don’t worry, it will be back next month, so be sure to submit your posts through the official form or by emailing me (chris [at] deeprootssanctuary.org). Hope you enjoyed it!

I was going to write a response to all the media attention that has been given to the case of [tag]Ellen Degeneres[/tag], [tag]Mutts and Moms[/tag], and Iggy the dog, but it looks like I was scooped by a fellow abolitionist.

On a personal note, let me say that one of my companion animals comes from a similar situation. B the cat (left), came to me from a friend who could no longer care for her. Rather than the shelter that she was originally adopted from taking her from me, however, I was simply asked to fill out the usual adoption papers and give the usual interview. I passed both and they were even kind enough to wave my adoption fee (I think because I talked about the importance of health care and diet). I had absolutely no problems with this process. As someone who helps run a sanctuary, I understand the importance of background checks. As Gary Francione pointed out in the post I linked to above,

I understand the concerns of rescue groups, such as Mutts and Moms. There are some people who adopt animals and who then dump them on a roadside or at a shelter that may kill them, or take them to a vet to be killed, because they no longer want the animal. There are even some people who have sold adopted animals into biomedical research.

Gary also has a good breakdown of Degeneres’ moral schizophrenia.

Perhaps a clue to her moral schizophrenia is provided by her repeated use of “it” to describe Iggy. In the end, nonhumans are just things—”its.” On one level, she recognizes that Iggy has attributes of personhood. But she is sobbing over an “it,” not really different from the other “its” that she thinks it acceptable to exploit.

In the end, I agree with Francione that both sides handled this situation poorly. Degeneres should not have abused her celebrity status to assume she could bypass the contract she signed and Mutts and Moms should have presented the family to whom Degeneres gave Iggy with the immediate option to follow procedure and adopt the dog. Even if they required another adoption fee (which ideally they would have waved), I’m sure the Degeneres could afford the gesture.

One thing that Francione didn’t touch on that needs to be pulled into the light is the potentially serious damage that Degeneres is doing to the dogs in the care of Mutts and Moms. A small example is the fact that I was going to try and find some stats on the number of dogs that Mutts and Moms has rescued, but I was unable to do so at the time of writing this because the outrage generated by Degeneres has overwhlemed the organization’s website. Now no one can get on to see what dogs they have for adoption or even where they are located.

Rescue organizations often run on very limited budgets. When I heard the voicemail left by Degeneres’ staff about how they were filing a suit and launching a media death storm against the organization, I couldn’t help but wonder what this was going to do for the organization’s budget. Sure, Degeneres gets a lot of free publicity that makes her look like a folk hero for animals, but how many more homeless and dead dogs will come as a result of Mutts and Moms having to spend their money on lawyers (not to mention any loss of funding from the negative publicity).

I am also curious as to what affect this may have on people’s opinion of adopting from shelters? I can’t help but think that at least a few people are now thinking that its better to buy a dog from a breeder… who has no care standards or adoption policies.

While I’m glad that Degeneres has called for an end to the death threats against Mutts and Moms, its time she suck up her pride and admit her own wrongdoing. Maybe then we can move on.

My first response to this question is, well, nothing. There is nothing innately wrong with circuses, that is. There are plenty of examples of circuses that don’t depend on the exploitation of [tag]animals[/tag]. Unfortunately, these are not typically what people think of when they hear the word circus.

Most of us were taught as children that [tag]circuses[/tag] involve animals (usually large and “wild”) performing stupid tricks at the behest of a ringleader who does nothing more than gently wave a hand to indicate to the animal its next move. What we aren’t taught is what it takes to get a wild animal to behave so unnaturally. I can assure you that it has nothing to do with the intellectual superiority of the trainers.

Rather, these animals are stripped from the nurturing care of their families at a young age, when they are then forced into a life of beatings, shoutings, burnings, and deprivation. The video below (from circuses.com) shows a little about the reality of circus animals.

[quicktime width="320" height="255"]http://blog.deeprootssanctuary.org/wp-content/uploads/2007/10/ringling_expose_med.mov[/quicktime]

Targeting Activists
The corporations behind these circuses spend a lot of money portraying themselves as wholesome family fun. They also spend a lot of money on lawyers and undercover agents to make sure that no one tarnishes that image.

Will Potter recently wrote an exposé about some of the tactics used by the circus industry to smash the public’s ability to criticize their practices. While the Ringling Brothers’ Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) suit against the ASPCA was rejected by the judge, Potter is likely correct in his assessment that this will not be the final tactic used against activists who are trying to put a stop to [tag]animal cruelty[/tag] in circuses.

Feld Entertainment, the producers of the Ringling Bros. and Barnum and Bailey Circus, has already begun to align the work of the ASPCA and other groups with extremism (which in today’s hyped climate is akin to terrorism).

“This lawsuit is a direct result of the animal rights extremists’ agenda to deny families in the United States entertainment choices like the circus and their ongoing conspiracy to harm Feld Entertainment,” company spokesman Stephen Payne said in a statement. (from The Dallas Morning News)

While it may be true that animal rights groups are attempting to deny families in the United States entertainment choices that are based on exploitation and torture, it can just as easily be said that Feld Entertainment has an agenda of denying U.S. citizens the right to assembly and free speech (not to mention privacy… check out the link above from Salon.com).

For more information about the exploitation and abuse of circus animals and what you can do to put a stop to it, visit circuses.com.